Freakin Fridays #41 ~ The Spirit In St. Louis ~ From the Files of the BSI

Welcome to Freakin Fridays, where I share my reviews of books that scare you, thrill you, and get those endorphins pumping.

Got a good one today. It’s the sixth in a series but could easily stand alone.

The Spirit In St. Louis

From the Files of the BSI #6

by Mark Everett Stone

Genre: Fantasy / Urban Fantasy

My Review

I ain’t afraid of no ghost. Yeah, right. An office building is taken over by an evil entity and everyone runs for cover. Who you gonna call? The BSI. And when they send a team and the team never comes out, who do they call? Kal Hakala, that’s who.

Kal is one of the best agents in the BSI (Bureau of Supernatural Investigation), but he’s been riding a desk since a dust up and some bad decisions on his last mission. He takes the assignment and hand picks his team. All except for one. A magician is required for every team. It only makes sense to fight magic with magic.

Kal picks a motley crew, but he has his reasons.

Rat. The magician. Not picked by Kal. A pervert and totally unlikable. Hopefully he’ll have the right stuff when the going gets tough.

Dove. A hell cat. She’s double tough and a match for any man. But it’s no man waiting inside that building.

Ghost. With an IQ off the charts, he joined his mind with the internet. The go to guy without a body, he’s linked to each team member by their headsets.

Billings. A diagnosed sociopath who, so far, has curbed his impulses to killing what needs to be killed and not his own team.

Ng. To look at him, you’d think he has no business being on the team. But he’s calm in a crisis with a fight tooth and nail attitude.

And then there’s Buffalo. Super smart. Competitive and goal oriented. Built like a tank and a good guy.

They enter the building. What awaits them is anyone’s guess. Who will come out? Maybe nobody.

Hang on to your boot straps. This is one hell of a ride. The thing in the building isn’t a ghost. It’s something much worse. Not long after entering, the team becomes separated and each must face their own horror. They go to hell and back, not all of them making it out alive.

There’s something about a book that won’t let go. That keeps you focused on the next sentence, paragraph, page. I tore through this, fearing the worst and getting plenty of it.

If you’re a fan of horror and thriller movies, there’s lots of quips you’ll recognize. I caught myself looking for them.

My best description of this book: Predator meets Doom. There’s lots of cool gadgets and monsters.

And while I may have jumped into this series late, with it being the 6th one, I had no problems following along. There were brief mentions of previous events that cleared up any confusion and made me curious to go back and read the earlier books.

This is a sneaky story. The cover doesn’t reveal what’s waiting inside, but once you read the book, you’ll see it works. I had a blast and would recommend this to anyone that enjoys urban fantasy with a dose or two of horror.

5 Stars

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Some favorite quotes:

“God, you’re such a pain in the ass.”

“Part of my undeniable charm.”

and

“Think of Q Branch in the Bond films, but with more explosions and things being turned into puddles of goo.”

~~~~~

Synopsis

The whole world now knows of the existence of the World Under, thanks to fallout from the terrible events in Omaha a year back. As the World Under’s most effective foe, Kal Hakala performed actions that were both heroic and horrific. Now, sidelined as an Agent, he serves the Bureau of Supernatural Investigation as its public face, charming talk show hosts and training new recruits known as “Green Peas.” However, the World Under never rests, and events force Kal back into action. A malevolent spirit occupies St. Louis’s Quint Building, and the team sent in to combat it disappears after their leader is driven to suicide. The BSI has no choice but to send in Kalevi Hakala and his team to solve the problem. As each of the individual members of Kal’s team is isolated and dumped into his or her private hell, Kal begins to wonder if he hasn’t finally met his match: the most powerful force the World Under has to offer. Book 6 in the From the Files of the BSI series.

Born in Helsinki, Finland, Mark Everett Stone arrived in the U.S. at a young age and promptly dove into the world of the fantastic. Starting at age seven with the Iliad and the Odyssey, he went on to consume every scrap of Norse Mythology he could get his grubby little paws on. At age thirteen he graduated to Tolkien and Heinlein, building up a book collection that soon rivaled the local public library’s. In college Mark majored in Journalism and minored in English. Mark is feverishly working on his next book, The Judas Line, while his amazingly patient wife, Brandie, keeps him and their two sons, Aeden and Gabriel, in check.